Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday February 22, 2013 @02:02PM
from the visitors-get-free-nukes-too dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The BBC reports that the reclusive country of North Korea is planning to enable 3G mobile internet access. It will not be available to the country's estimated one million mobile users, however. The service will be available only to international visitors, who have been allowed to bring their own mobile devices into the country since January of this year. The decision comes shortly after Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said enabling 3G internet in the country would be 'very easy' during his recent visit there. Currently, North Korean citizens can only access a small number of state-controlled sites. Might this decision open the door for some of them to surreptitiously access the open net?"

NK's government don't gives two shits for what non-koreans think. They'll probably try to monitor what passes through their wires, like your own government does as well, but they do not actively try to fuck with tourists (and the tourists, as well, do not try to fuck with them because you just don't fuck with someone who can send you to a work camp). And they have a very good reason for not screwing the tourists: they need the dollars tourists bring every year.

I would. When was the last time N Korea arrested visitors saying they were CIA spies? On the contrary, N Korea is very welcoming to foreigners, including Americans. It seems they want to impress them, not arrest them. This 3G internet for visitors seems another step in the same direction.

It's their own people they persecute. And the South Koreans, who they consider to be traitors to a unified Korea.

Terrorism has a wide and subjective definition whether you are in NK or the USA.

Did you know that North Korea has a number of pilotless aircraft constantly circling various foreign countries. And from time to time these aircrafts assassinate both NK nationals and foreigners who are deemed to be against North Korea. No trial. No worries about who else might be in the building they destroy. Women and children as well as men.

Are you suggesting that NK doesn't detain foreign journalists, movie starts, doesn't send massive military to countriers across the globe to devastate tiny countries, doesn't have millions of street cameras, hasn't occupied half the globe and decimated locals? Oh, wait, I thought the topic was about NK, wait, that should be UK, right?

Two American television journalists today were convicted of a "grave crime" against North Korea and sentenced to 12 years of hard labor, a move that increased mounting tensions between the U.S. and the reclusive Asian state.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, reporters for San Francisco-based Current TV, were sentenced by the top Central Court in Pyongyang in a two-day trial that started Friday as U.S. officials demanded the release of the two women.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency reported that the court "sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor" but gave no further details.

Because the pair were tried by the nation's highest court, there can be no appeal.

Of course the North Koreans are not especially shy about grabbing Americans.

Come now, a handful of examples, some dating back to 1978. The US has kidnapped hundreds of people from other countries in the last 12 years and are keeping them hostages without trial, and at some points in time used torture on them.

And several of the examples you state are of individuals that have illegally crossed the border into N Korea. The US also arrests people that illegally cross their borders. And whilst many are sent straight back, thousands are in long term detention.

Sure it would...and it would also probably get you a couple years in the gulag as a "spy for the CIA" for your trouble.

Frankly anybody that goes to that country deserves what they get, sorry but they do. Its no different than the USSR under Stalin's cult of personality and your "rights" are there only at the whim of the regime.

Who cares. CIA #1 or #2 priority is spying for USA companies - I ain't american. China has it maybe #3. Russia, I wouldnt' know but probably top ten. Which one should I fear more?.Oh, about North Korea... hahahaha, you've got to be kidding!

Yes, I've seen that. There's FUD in there, but no facts. Has it ever happened at least once? What did they install? Nope, no facts, just scare stories about what "could" happen. But there are real stories with real names and verifiable facts about siezed laptops in the US. But that's ok, because FUD lies trump reality because we like the US better than China.

For all we know, it's an attack from botnets, and right now, chinese cell phones seem to be botnet vulnerable. So rather than identifying "an attack came from a govenrment IP address in Beijing, the answers are *always* cleaned down to "the attack came from China, with no verifiable facts included, ever. The only rational conclusion is that they are all lies. If they had real proof, they'd release it.

Yep, no chance whatsoever that they're going to log and try to decrypt everything on that network. Kim Jong is way too sexy to do something like that. What's interesting is I hear no mention of filtering or a firewall associated with the technology.

I think a lot of us would be interested in visiting north Korea if only to see for ourselves how things are in the world's most closed and secretive nation. Might help us appreciate the things we have even with our flawed and corrupt political systems.

I'm maybe a strange one but I think a visit to north Korea would be fascinating. Of course I'd also like to visit the dead zone around Chernobyl too. I suspect a lot of Slashdot readers would too.

Kim Jong-un was pretty much obliged to make a show of strength upon taking office - launching "satellites" and testing "nukes". This ensures that he doesn't get overthrown by his own people, or "liberated" by you-know-who.

Kim Junior has experienced the outside world, and he may well believe that it is in everybody's best interests, even his, to gradually open it up to his people. Time will tell.

For all we know, Junior wants to open up NK completely, but he expects to catch a bullet in the brain from the military generals if he does all he wants to do. So he's doing what he can when he can. And he'll either liberate NK, or die trying.

Or maybe he really thinks that NK could be a resort for the world, and is as loony as Dad.

I think the general answer is that budget != performance, especially where governments are concerned.

Yep, which is why we clearly need to give our military a higher budget to make up for this shortfall.

This is somewhat off topic, but I was discussing the F-35 project with a friend just this morning. If you've been following on, you probably know that the product itself is in serious trouble, almost like the Ryugyong Hotel, and clearly should be overhauled or canceled. What makes that impossible is the project is now "too big to fail". There's too many manufacturers and jobs at stake, in too many states (and other countries) for it to be allowed to die.

why the fuck are two guys from Google getting more done than our State department

Because the State Department's negotiations with North Korea are focused on trivial things like providing food and humanitarian aid in exchange for NK shutting down its nuclear weapons program. How foolish of them not to focus on cellphone Internet access for tourists.

Might this decision open the door for some of them to surreptitiously access the open net?

Seems like having a device which gives away your location to a brutally repressive regime, and using said device to access things that would get you and your extended family thrown into starvation camps might not be a good idea.

On the other hand, I have no idea what I'd do if I were a North Korean. Maybe look up the best way to make suicide look like an accident so your surviving relatives don't get thrown into those starvation camps for the crime of being related to someone who dishonored the country

However, given the general poverty and rural lifestyle, market penetration is only around 5% and that is predominantly limited to the educated/employed population in major cities. External internet is not available but 3G telephony certainly is.

I mean, even the great firewall of china allows users to access data outside of china (albiet with state filtering and what not).

I don't know if this is a good thing or not that they haven't got better access considering their penchant for building nukes and what not, but with better access to information outside their own borders they probably would have had a working missile system 5-6 years sooner. If not from simply having access to that kind of information from the internet, then the benefits of better education for the potential scientists in the country.

North Korea is an inexcusable mess of a country that wouldn't even exist today without China's external backing. China actually disagrees with North Korea's policies, but the *idea* of communism (even though NK's implementation is the worst on Earth) still holds a lot of patriotic sway in China (being the only successful communist country). I personally can't wait for NK to actually do something stupid so China drops their support (do you really think China wants to be involved in some kind of war because the "ally" they babysit is misbehaving, hell no!) and that little country collapses in on itself.

I was under the impression that china supports NK to avoid a flood of ~24 million refugees trying to evacuate if the regime were to crumble....which it would, almost instantly, without china's backing.

North Korea is an inexcusable mess of a country that wouldn't even exist today without China's external backing. China actually disagrees with North Korea's policies, but the *idea* of communism (even though NK's implementation is the worst on Earth) still holds a lot of patriotic sway in China (being the only successful communist country). I personally can't wait for NK to actually do something stupid so China drops their support (do you really think China wants to be involved in some kind of war because the "ally" they babysit is misbehaving, hell no!) and that little country collapses in on itself.

I can't figure out if you mean North Korea is a successful communist country, or you mean that China is. Either point is wrong. China is not a communist country, and North Korea is not successful by any measure.

It could be that China sees North Korea's totalitarianism as echoing the totalitarianism of Mao, who is somehow seen as being a positive influence on the country by some older people in China. On this basis, the more totalitarian and crazy the North Korean government gets, the more some people

by now I assume that the US is at least as invasive as North Korea, but it's OK when Amerika does it apparently.

Oh for f*ck's sake. Go send your friend an email that says "I think Obama is an idiot." Then wait until the FBI knocks on your door. Here's a tip: You'll be waiting a LONG time.

Then go to North Korea and send an email that says "I think Kim Jong-un is an idiot." Chances are good you'll be in a gulag (without a trial) before your friend gets the email, and once he does he'll go to jail to

by now I assume that the US is at least as invasive as North Korea, but it's OK when Amerika does it apparently.

Oh for f[u]ck's sake. Go send your friend an email that says "I think Obama is an idiot." Then wait until the FBI knocks on your door. Here's a tip: You'll be waiting a LONG time.

Then go to North Korea and send an email that says "I think Kim Jong-un is an idiot." Chances are good you'll be in a gulag (without a trial) before your friend gets the email, and once he does he'll go to jail too.

Impressive. Try writing an email to your lawyer that says "I've received a national security letter [wikipedia.org]. What should I do, counselor?" and chances are good you'll wind up in ADX Florence [wikipedia.org] or some extrajudicial hellhole before you get a reply.

Typically communist countries are enthralled in the idea of advancing technology almost to the point of obsession, but unless you count failing to implement 50 year old missile technology North Korea doesn't exactly make strides here (although they'll claim to have put men on the moon before the USA and have broken warp 5 barrier if you asked them, no doubt). North Korea is just a sad little excuse of a country. God forbid that they might have access to modern technology and be able to communicate with each

The tendency is to demonise North Korea with little or no knowledge of the country - just because it is ego-boosting to feel superior - while glorifying the USA. You highlighted communism, so the reverse comparison to capitalism was begging to be made.

For many people, the USA appears just as broken North Korea - albeit in different ways...

Since prison camps seem to keep coming up, lets try some prison stats from Wikipedia:- The United States has the highest documented incarce

Boy, this is sure good news for visitors to North Korea. They should all be sure to take their private personal communication devices to North Korea. I'm sure that nothing will go wrong and the benevolent rulers of North Korea will respect the privacy of any data on the devices and the users communications and Internet access.

I saw a video on YT about some people who were visiting NK, it was a video about the Traffic girls that direct traffic. It seemed as if the visitors were very ignorant about NK, speaking about how great it was and a few comments about living there.

It totally went against the bad rap that NK gets. It was either propaganda, extremely ignorant Canadians, or everything we have heard about NK is false. You could probably find it on YT if you go look, so you can grasp what I write of.

NK does not screw with foreigner because they need the cash, and in fact is becoming more accommodating for that very reason. You are not going to get locked up for saying the wrong thing and would need to provoke a response but deliberating seeking out things that to embarrass them as a number of aid workers have.

And in all likelihood you are not going to be spied upon 24/7 and have your electronics copied/monitored because most tourists are just not that interesting !!!

There isn't a lot of detail mentioned in the article about exactly what will be done to prevent the locals from using all of their smuggled cell phones to access the open internet.

In the past the DPRK has made decisions that "give in without actually giving in". They didn't originally allow non state-owned businesses but they tolerated people selling in their own markets for example. This seems similar to me. There is a high amount of smuggled cell phones from China, but very few people have the off

For the ~communist~ (read totalitarian hellhole) rulers in that country it will be easy. They own the network and can monitor all traffic with ease and locating rogue connections would be trivially easy. Combine that with Chinese style filtering on steroids and you can keep denying your people basic human rights for the forseeable future.

Greetings undercover CIA personnel, welcome to glorious leader's free wi-fi access. Please feel free to communicate with your contacts and login to accounts and databases in United States and Japan. All communications 100% encrypted by glorious leader himself, ensuring the utmost confidentiality in communications. Also, please friend and like us on Facebook.

In case you are not aware, the post is a satire of a fellow known as APK. The grammar used is modeled after APK's as you can see here [thorschrock.com]. Or, you can just look around a bit and see some of his posts on here about the wonders of host files.